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Forbes Names Microsoft's Steve Ballmer Worst CEO
New submitter _0x783czar writes "Microsoft haters gleefully have latched on to the latest scoop that a Forbes columnist has named Steve Ballmer the worst CEO. It seems that the article has leveled some strong accusations of irresponsible and ineffective business practices; claiming that Microsoft has not progressed over the last 12 years of Ballmer's leadership. (Full disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan myself and tend to agree with this piece.)"
Yeah, why are we ignoring the many companies that have failed either because they failed to adapt or underwent gross negligence. I have a feeling that the CEOs of the major banks in the US have actively harmed every human on Earth. Ballmer has merely failed to maintain a near-monopoly status in a highly transient industry.
Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today. Not only has he singlehandedly steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets) but in the process he has sacrificed the growth and profits of not only his company but âoeecosystemâ companies such as Dell, Hewlett Packard and even Nokia. The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value â" and jobs.
And that is bad how? What I mean by that is that I sympathize with Microsoft share holders but I also regularly thank a long list of deities that Microsoft does not dominate the mobile music, handset, and tablet markets as well as desktop computing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Maybe they are looking at what Microsoft is capable of vs their leader. RIM at times sounds like a complete implosion. Microsoft produces outbursts of good ideas inspite of their leadership implying some good thinkers/workers are left.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
I've always felt that they've wasted a lot of money trying to expand into new lines of businesses. Money that would have been well spent either giving it back to stockholders as dividends. But even new lines of business that are doing well (not considering the massive investment in them so the ROI may still stink) like Bing and XBox would probably benefit the stockholders as a spinoff.
If it was up to me, I would break the company apart into 3 or 4 companies and allow the non-Windows companies to develop for all sorts of platforms. But what do I know?
That said, who's going to remove him? Bill Gates? Does Paul Allen still hold a significant stake in the company? Who owns what share of the voting stock? And who makes up the board?
I don't see Ballmer leaving anytime soon unless the investors start getting upset. And if 30% of the company (and I'm pulling that number out of thin air) is held by Gates and Ballmer, that doesn't seem likely.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Personally, I hope Ballmer has a very long tenure at Microsoft and that the past twelve years or so are only the beginning of his impact on that company.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I can't believe Stephen Elop of Nokia is not on that list. During his stint as the CEO of the former world leader in mobile phones, the company has lost 70% of its market valuation – mostly down to Elop's borderline insane strategic choices. Maybe the list is only for US companies?
Well, he was the first business manager for the company. I guess Forbes is saying that he didn't learn much about the business in his 32 years there. Funny enough, this isn't a bunch of Linux/Apply fanbois throwing this out there... It's Forbes.
I do take issue them using the share value being used as his barometer. Yes, MS was $60 a share in 2000. Every share of anything that was remotely tech related was horrendously overinflated in 2000. The fact that the share is still worth $30 is impressive despite the other detriments listed in this article. It's a nitpick, and otherwise, I think the article is fair.
Dot-com flameout, 9/11, housing and banking collapse in the US, combined with market saturation in the PC space and getting trounced by Apple on the high end ... I'm not sure what he could have done. Contrast Gates, who rode the Windows95 wave to fame and bailed at the right time. Maybe Ballmer's winning move was not to play.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I guess that actually makes quite a bit of sense. But even given that many of the banks would have imploded if not for the bail out, GM would be gone if not for the bail out and plenty of marginally successful companies have gone through quite a bit of economic turmoil that MS has avoided, IBM, for example, is laying of a ton of people and has been for some time now.
Even in money-making-game, I think coming up red or having to be bailed out is worse than not being black enough.
What a load of garbage. Forbes is all about share price. That's a moronic litmus test of a CEO. Share price has no direct connection, and often not even an indirect connection to a CEO's abilities.
I don't respond to AC's.
10 years ago Windows was cesspool of malware on unmanaged PCs (home users) - yes there's always room to improve here, but Windows 7/8 is markedly more hardened to attack than XP RTM was, MSFT profits came from 100% Windows & Office, Windows Servers were a joke, and the XBox was laughed at like Windows Phone is by some today.
I'm happy with the direction MSFT is going; Windows Servers especially now are serious contenders in the enterprise (and bring in serious cash now), Office is moving in many directions at once (Office 365, iOS, Metro), the online services are growing too (Bing, albeit slowly, SkyDrive - making Google look out of date), and the XBox has come into its' own. Not everything's perfect of course; WP7 has the most room here, but the reviews of people using it are generally very positive and the Nokia effect has yet to be fully realised. Not to mention Windows 8 will unify 1 OS across many many device-types & form-factors (although again, to what extent this will be successful is as yet unclear - the direction is a good one IMO). There're some real assets in MSFT, despite what you might hear on slashdot.
Anyway, I know this is a unpopular opinion here and I fully expect to be patronised with snarky replies because of it, but honestly I think Ballmer has done some good things for MSFT. Not perfect, and he'll never have the cult-like status Jobs or even Gates did but people underestimate him IMO. That's just my 2cents.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Nope, I'm going to have to say Forbes is off base here. There are too many other CEOs driving their companies or our economy into the ground. Even if you stipulate that they must still be employed so that you can fire them, Ballmer might be in the top 10, but I don't think he'd make the top 5 much less number 1.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Look Ballmer is a douche, no doubt. But worst CEO, compared to the putzes who ran almost every bank, Chrystler, and GM into bankruptcy? Compared to Scott Thompson? Jerry Yang?
He may be a dick, but I don't see MS going bankrupt or asking for government bailouts.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Keep in mind this is Forbes we're talking about. Leading the world into a massive global recession is fine if your company is able to profit from it. It's just business.
Maybe he should have asked for a government bailout, since Forbes apparently thinks that CEO's who run their companies into bankruptcy and go running to Uncle Sam to save them are still somehow better than the CEO of a very profitable company.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
From that point of view Microsoft will always be badly run because it is quite hard to distort its share price owing to the very public visibility of its products. Google, Apple and other companies whose value is hard to work out are wonderful because traders can profit going down as well as up.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
CEOs are also easy targets because they seem to get paid handsomely whether they succeed or fail. If Joe Worker screws up his job, at best he gets let go and can collect unemployment, and maybe he gets a tiny bit of severance; worst case, he's fired for cause and doesn't get a damn thing. But when Joe CEO drives a company into the ground? Not to worry, he's still gonna get his multi-million dollar golden parachute, which he'll ride right over to the next company. It's no wonder people get pissed about that disparity.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
RIM. Hell even Nokia.
I agree. I am baffled by a lot of the MS hate today. I think a lot of it must be residual, because the MS I know today is not that bad. Nobody is in love with them, but there is not a whole lot to complain about either. As a developer, I could not be more pleased dealing with the Windows platforms. From MS, you really do get the sense that they care about developers, as opposed to Apple where they seem to actively thwart developers more often that not.
But still, we had the "too big to fail" banks needing bailouts to preven another Great Depression, we had GM needing to be bailed out, there's Carly Fiona, there's the latest thing with that bank that just misplaced two billion dollars, there's Rupert Murdoch and the phone hacking, there's Sony (biggest loss in their history for the fourth year in a row). I'm no fan of Ballmer's; in fact I detest and ridicule him, but to call him the worst CEO is pretty much a stretch. It's not like MS is in the red year after year like Sony or RIM.
Free Martian Whores!
Microsoft's share price hasn't remained constant. The article points out he's lost 2/3rd of its value with MS rarely in the $30s.
It's sort of a slow motion train wreck, IMHO Metro will fail, Ballmer will present desktop licenses of Windows 8 as Metro sales and pretend its a success. It appears to me he's a saleman, and the biggest sales job he's doing, is himself to Microsoft shareholders so they don't fire him.
I grew up on Slashdot. I remember sitting in my freshman dorm room over a decade ago, cackling in agreement with all the MICRO$OFT hate. Yearning for the Linux desktop. I was a part of that culture. I believed in it. We were real nerds, and we understood real technology, and we were going to win eventually.
Well I have some news for you guys. Microsoft is not the piece of shit company it once was. The article is spot on with its analysis of Ballmer's failure to lead MS into the forefront of relatively new markets, yes. But I cannot comprehend all of the continued and abundant dislike for this company among nerds (and even more staggering is the compulsive fawning over Apple, a company that is for all intents and purposes exactly what MS was in the hay day of their uncoolness). Just about every mainstream product MS has released in the past 3-4 years has been incredible. Namely though, Windows 7, Windows phone, and all of their developer tools are just absolutely top notch pieces of software.
If you're a real nerd and you're really paying attention and you're really using your brain and you're really thinking for yourself, you might see that they deserve a lot more credit than what they are getting here. Of course I can't speak for Ballmer. I don't think his leadership necessarily has any bearing on the quality of the company's work within their existing markets.
Disclaimer: Not an MS shill, just a modern-day sympathizer.
GM would have gone bust. During this time they'd have had to shut down a significant number of operations, possibly all significant operations.
Their creditors would have been paid off pennies on the pound. Those creditors include major manufacturing concerns. Concerns that also supply Ford and Chrysler. Chrysler would also have defaulted on their debts as they were suffering the same problem.
Ford, who were completely blameless in this affair, would suddenly find their costs skyrocketing, as suppliers go back to them and say "With only your business coming in, and with our now massive debts thanks to 2/3 of our customers defaulting, we need to put up prices or shut down." Realistically, Ford isn't able to make progress and starts shutting down significant parts of its Detroit based operation.
Result:
- Millions laid off
- GM and Chrysler unable to reorganize because even if they come back in some form, the Detroit infrastructure now has massive holes in it.
Leaving...
OK. "So what?" you argue (yes, you did!) Honda and Toyota can pick up the slack. They'll just make more cars, while hiring lots of people to do the making of cars thing.
No.
You see, that's not how it works. For that to happen, it would have to take a few months and no money at all to:
- Build new factories, and expand the capacity of existing ones
- Have suppliers also build new factories, or expand the capacity of existing factories.
- Recruit new dealerships across the nation to cover the expected increase in sales volume.
So here's what actually happens:
1. Honda, Toyota, Kia, et al, have a temporary spike in demand. They increase prices to dampen demand.
2. The millions of unemployed workers in Detroit don't gain jobs because no industry moves to Detroit, and it's not easy for a million people to suddenly move hundreds of miles south.
3. As people do attempt to move, property prices around auto-plants in the south increase, exacerbating the expansion cost problem of Honda, Toyota, et al.
4. Demand slows, as the effects of the massive increase in unemployment take hold. This includes the effect on the remains of the automotive industry.
5. The remaining manufacturers find themselves finding it harder to sell more vehicles. It's quite possible that the increases in unemployment might kill some of those that remain if their target market included the income levels disproportionately hit by the types of jobs lost.
Basically, there's no way the unmanaged bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM would have been anything other than disastrous for everyone concerned. Which is a major reason why Ford was fully in favor of the government stepping in to provide the bridging loans necessary to make a managed restructuring work.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If you are looking for the worst managed company, Kodak must surely get a mention. They are being driven out of business by a new technology, digital cameras, that they actually invented.
There is a largely-held perception that Apple's success is due to slick advertising. Where Apple has excelled is in product management as a function of marketing. They have powerfully identified the feature set and price points people will pay for their products. They have accurately forecast demand so that they can leverage volume purchasing of components to keep the price at those acceptable points while building in a healthy profit margin. They are firing on all cylinders, and even a few cylinders nobody thought existed.
Meanwhile, Ballmer has ignored the trends and innovations of other companies until success in the marketplace forces him to mount a too-late response (Zune, Windows Store, Windows Phone 7, et. al.). Consider this 2007 interview where Ballmer mocked the iPhone's prospects. For him to do that means that he was ignoring competitive intelligence studies that he should have been taking seriously. Even then, his marketing department should have been focus-grouping on the iPhone to determine what the demand was and projecting out where it could go. Had he read what the competitive intelligence studies would have told him, his response would have been to acknowledge the vacuum in existing smartphone technology and hint about forthcoming Microsoft innovations to come in that space.
In years to come, the wikipedia definition for the word "hubris" will contain a link to that video clip.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
But I'd argue that I believe it's not really accurate. It sounds like exactly what the pro-bailout folks want you to believe....
For starters, when you speak of Ford as the "uninvolved party" and the good guy? That's not quite reality. Ford's CEO petitioned Congress in 2008 to authorize a credit line of up to $9 billion for Ford in case the economy got worse and the company needed it. Ford also received $5.9 billion in government loans in 2009 to retool its manufacturing plants to produce more fuel-efficient cars, and the company lobbied for and benefited from the cash-for-clunkers program. Ford was also entwined in the situation because almost 25 percent of Ford’s top dealers also owned GM and Chrysler franchises.
All of the "Big 3" were to blame for mismanagement and a "we're too big to fail" attitude. Ford was just lucky to be in a little bit better place, financially, at the time everything really came apart at the seams.
Meanwhile? We're in a situation today where an "American car" is often American in name-plate only. "Foreign cars" are often assembled 100% right here in the U.S.A. as well. Hyundai's plant in Alabama is one of the only non-union auto plants in the nation, and is doing incredibly well. They hire a lot of people who only had low-paying jobs in the restaurant industry and the like, before starting there. They receive training for an actual career job and pay that's at least 80% or so of what their unionized counterparts receive ... and Hyundai claims they get employees with more positive attitudes and more willingness to do the job well. Sounds like win-win to me.
Meanwhile, what has GM done with those bailout funds lately? I see Cadillac is going to build their new hybrid electric vehicle and their flagship XTS over in new assembly plants in China. Is that what you were hoping those tax dollars would be spent on?