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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.)"
Really? Even worse than RIM?
Exactly. While Steve hasn't changed the world and Windows is still a toy OS, under his supervision Windows has become again quite nice and clean, usable package.
Fun fact: in Finland, Ballmer's nickname is sometimes "Pallomeri".
Now, I don't like Steve Ballmer, but to say that he is an incompetent CEO is absurd. Under his watch, company revenues and profits have increased VERY significantly and that's what the CEO is responcible for. I can sympathize with the shareholder gripes that MSFT stock price hasn't really gone anywhere over the past decade, but that's because the starting point (10-12 years ago) was a completely ridiculous overvaluation of the tech boom. I can easily name several other major companies whose stock has gone nowhere for a long time despite company earnings growing consistently and their future looking as bright as ever.
Ballmer's concept of business is stuck in the Windows XP days, when competitors feared Microsoft's entry into a market. Back in those days, Microsoft could get away with releasing half-baked products, and competitors would run off, knowing that MS's resources would demolish them. Microsoft's mindset was to prevent competitors from entering markets.
The problem now is that it's not 2001 and Microsoft is no longer in a monopoly position. Instead of leveraging their Office and OS market share, they have to enter new markets and win new customers. And they're really struggling at doing this. To win from the ground up Microsoft products would need to have compelling advantage over their competitors, whether it be price, features, or relationship with customers.
How Microsoft went about Windows Phone 7 is an example of their old, "monopoly" playbook failing to work in a new market. Microsoft saw that a market existed, and went to enter the market using the old approach: build a 'good enough' product and hope that competitors give up in fear. The results (which Microsoft refuse to publish out of embarrassment) speak for themselves. Microsoft didn't compete on price - their phones were at mid-level prices, their features were lacking compared to the competition, and any relationship with customers (e.g. enterprise customers using Exchange and Active Directory, etc) failed to materialise because MS didn't implement critical security 'lock down' features on the phone. Microsoft technical staff have the know-how to do these things - but they just don't seem to happen. Is it the management structures? the reward mechanisms? or the corporate strategy? internal politics? .. certainly it's a combination of factors. Thigns are systemically wrong with the whole organisation.
In short, Microsoft is failing at a strategic level. No-one is excited about Microsoft products anymore. No-one thinks their products will be better value or cheaper than the competitors. No-one feels that Microsoft is listening especially closely to anyone except themselves. Microsoft's actions are decidedly tactical, rather than strategic: a new user interface here, some more features there. But without a strategic - CEO - level change, I can't see their situation improving. Having diversified so much, Microsoft will not collapse overnight, but it will continue to slide into irrelevance.
16 years ago, the mere mention of Gates or Ballmer would be enough to get me foaming at the mouth.
Today?
Gates is on track to wipe out polio. And Ballmer? What's to hate? Anti-competitive practices? Apple's a far bigger concern.
What else?
Pollution? Political corruption? Financial malfeasance? Mistreatment of employees? Microsoft does none of this.
And to boot, their product line continues to improve. Can't get the hate going anymore.
If Forbes is using STOCK PRICE as a barometer of how good the CEO is, well, then every company on the S&P500 is the worst CEO of all time.
For the last decade, the S&P500 has remained essentially flat, while CEO compensation has gone up 500% -- Companies may be getting more profitable, but that value is going right into someone's pocket, it's not going to share value, it's not going to re-investment, and it's not going to jobs.
Forbes is drinking the kool-aid, and is missing the big picture. In fact, this article is probably fluff to distract us from the *REAL* story, that the market itself is failing.
Take Friday's big relevation that a certain big bank lost $2 billion is a bad trade. Do any of you actually believe that hogwash? We're talking about a company big enough to manipulate the market in their favor, every time. We're talking a bank, an organization that can't lose money because of the way the entire game is rigged -- only an idiot could lose money at a bank.
No, that money's not lost, it's in someone's pocket.We're just being told it's lost so no one goes looking for it because we're the ones who were robbed.
Steal $100 and go to jail. Steal a billion and cover it up properly, and you retire in Bolivia.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
> I can't believe Stephen Elop of Nokia is not on that list.
TFA "credits" Ballmer for the destruction of Nokia and others in the Microsoft ecosystem. Since Nokia is now a Microsoft subsidiary in all but name, I'm not sure it's much of a stretch.
Log in or piss off.
I was a POM for 6 of the Ballmer years.
It was like being in the bowels of the Politburo.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The only place I can think of where MS has become successful where it initially had no market presence has been the Xbox gaming console, and even there MS leveraged their experience with desktop PC technology and in some ways co-opt existing developers who developed for the PC platform, as well as subsidizing the platform for years before they began to make any money.
In every other case MS has been merely building on existing platforms while failing to create any new areas of market dominance -- Windows OS, Exchange, SQL, MS Office.
Phones? WinMo had some traction when ActiveSync became established, then was in some ways abandoned, leaving the market to BlackBerry and ultimately Apple and Android. Windows Phone doesn't look like it will be more than a niche player. Bing? Fail. Zune? Fail. Etc.Etc.
I wonder if the real reason for this is actually the success of their core products -- anyone who's actually talented, especially at the management level, wants the easy money of the core products and also resists any innovative products in other areas that might threaten them.
I sometimes wonder if MS might have actually been more successful if HAD been broken up by the DOJ and forced to actually innovate vs. just collecting rent from their monopoly positions.
More so now than in the past. There have been some good people at Microsoft. They were either seduced in by the idea that the biggest s/w company must somehow be the best. Or they went in with their eyes open, hoping to put up with the culture for as long as it took for options to mature to build their nest egg for their own idea.
With MSFT stalled at around $30 (for years), the nest egg idea is dead. People that actually want to do something with their lives are getting out now (or already have). The time will come when having Microsoft on one's resume (CV) will be a negative (there are a few other companies around here like this). Then, the stampede for the door will commence.
Have gnu, will travel.
> Ballmer has ignored the trends and innovations of other companies until success in the marketplace forces him to mount a too-late response
I hope one day Ballmer writes a book and talks about what he was thinking.
To me, it seems like Microsoft tried to predict where Apple was heading with iOS and I think they predicted a merging of their desktop and mobile operating systems. I really think that's how Microsoft ended up developing the dog that is Windows 8 / Windows RT. Their near future strategy seems totally bizarre to me and I can't figure out what it is they think they are going to accomplish.
In my day job, I work on a large Windows desktop application and we every change we've made lately has been to decouple us from Microsoft. I've always advocated choosing the cross-platform solution to a problem even if it is the more difficult path. Up until about a year ago, I've usually lost those arguments.