It's Not a New Ballmer Microsoft Needs; It's a New Gates

theodp writes "Over at GeekWire, Todd Bishop posits that Microsoft doesn't need to replace Steve Ballmer as much as it needs to replace Bill Gates. 'The perennial push to oust Ballmer is back,' Bishop says. 'But as long as we're all going down this path again, there's actually a larger issue to address: Microsoft no longer has an overarching technology leader next to the CEO at the top of the company – someone with a strong engineering background and technical vision, surveying the field and calling the plays. There will never be another Bill Gates. But there should be someone in his former role as chief software architect, if not in title, then at least in effect.' Ray Ozzie was supposed to be The One, but for some reason that never really worked out (Dave Winer warns BigCo politics can crush even the most innovative). Any thoughts on who might 'fill the bill'?"

Comments

Starring Bill Gates as Himself

[FatLittleMonkey]

I wonder what would happen to Microsoft's share price if Gates himself stepped back into the role?

Re:Starring Bill Gates as Himself

[MrDoh!]

Sure it'd have a jump up in price by a fair bit..
Then Gates himself doing the spiel for Windows 8, that'd get a bump too. The amount of press headlines would give a surge, but he'd have to be back and actually involved to maintain it I think. That'd take a few years so he can get back upto speed on what's there now and direct going forward for a couple of product releases.

Apart from that joke about bumping into Bill in the Airport, if it ever did happen, I'd love to have a good chat with him over a coffee (I'd even pay for it, but he's cover the cookies). Talk vision/tech/whatifs. Ballmer? I don't think I'd be on the right wavelength to have a conversation with him. He's obviously not got the techy gene in him.

Someone who understands the purpose of an OS

[0111 1110]

What Microsoft needs is someone who understands what an Operating System is and what it is not. A genuine geek who understands that a 40 GB operating system is wasteful and unnecessary and a sign of incompetence and stupidity. Someone who understands that when your software grows to 10 times the size of your competitors (Linux and OSX) something is badly wrong and needs to be fixed. When you don't know the first thing about coding you have no business managing coders. It will all just turn into one giant predictable mess. As we have seen with post-Gates Microsoft.

Re:Someone who understands the purpose of an OS

[laffer1]

What reality are you in? All modern operating systems are bloated and big. It's a fact. Most Linux distros install a bunch of crap the user will never use. Even KDE and Gnome (especially gnome) are rather large. The QT4 push helped, but when the SOURCE CODE to qt4 is over 100MB, what do you think the compiled result is going to be. Gnome is now using a lot of python scripts and changing their minds all the time, that's even worse.

This is just the state of computing.. people have heard disk and ram are cheap and they keep pushing it. disk is no longer cheap if you actually like SSD. I see the cost of storage going up over time until the technology to make SSDs huge (density) evolves in the next ten years. Let me clarify I mean this in context of replacing spinning disks, not that SSD prices are going to go up as that would be foolish.

The problem with getting a geek at Microsoft is that they need the power to fight with ballmer. He shouldn't be chariman and ceo of microsoft, only one role and the other guy should be in the other role. That way they have to agree on some things to move forward. Ballmer lost his check and balance when the antitrust trial hit and things have been going downhill since then. Microsoft acts in a very conservative business sense most of the time now and it's hurting them. That's not how tech companies operate. It only works for IBM because they're a consulting company now and their customer base wants the stability. By acting conservative, Microsoft is no longer cool, no longer interesting to young people and frankly the un-apple. Microsoft has also lost it's way with developers by the recent WIndows 8 comments and then silence. Developers now like open source, and they deal with apple due to popularity.

Microsoft has an image problem they can't shake no matter what they do in marketing. I don't blame the marketing department, they're only reacting to ballmer's mistakes. He needs to go or be put in check.