I think he is still responsible for creating this monster. And he never apologized for the consequences of his actions that are still unraveling like today. Remember Ballmer was placed because he was always following his lead and counsel, as reported.
I honestly think he doesn't realize that he's the problem and people around him won't tell him the truth. Ballmer is a very intimidating guy both in physical size and attitude and is always ready to be combative. This make it very difficult to have a open dialog with him.
Him remaining still as the CEO is not his fault its the boards fault they should have made moves to genteelly replace him a long time ago.
That is a good point. History is going to remember Ballmer as one of the worst CEOs in history, though, unlike Jeffrey Skilling or Bernard Ebbers, Ballmer will be remembered for mistakes of omission rather than commission. And the revival of Microsoft should be factored in to a full understanding of the situation.
I wouldn't blame it on Ballmer. All these decisions were made when Gates was in control. the designers of NT and windows 95 had a chance to clean up and didn't do it.
Right or wrong, your argument is exactly why Ballmer is still in charge and at the same time the reason many think Microsoft's future is bleak until he's not.
You somehow think that all the bad decisions from Microsoft comes directly from Ballmer? There are plenty of people at Microsoft (still) who think like Ballmer did, and they will in the future too. The decisions that come from Microsoft comes from the entire of Microsoft, and they are all contributing to it happening too.
I'll concede the Xbox One wasn't Ballmer's fault, but he still gets a fair share of the blame for WP. It was (or should have been) Microsoft's most important new initiative for years, Ballmer could clearly see that it was failing, and yet he kept promoting Myerson and giving him more power. A better CEO would have intervened.
Ballmer may be the best example of a Shaved Gorilla currently living, but I think he became the official scapegoat of Microsoft when they put him in charge.
Things were already going horribly wrong, and they put a despot in charge to soak up the blame for all of the terrible things his peers, subordinates and predecessors were already cocking up. The next person has a comparatively easy job of leading a Renaissance, assuming he didn't manage to run it into the ground in the interim. Which he nearly did.
I really miss http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ and not just for the schadenfreude. There was quite a bit of wisdom to be extracted from hindsight is 20/20 commentary, when you're an outside observer.
There is this universal contempt for Ballmer that I don't understand. He has made several mistakes, but on the other hand:
He has held senior positions in MS for 30+ years, including 12 years as CEO now. Except a handful of quarters recently, they have shown revenue and profit growth. (It is expected to go up again, but who knows.) In addition, they have made countless 3rd party developers successful.
While we can all be happy about Apple and Google being more successful of late, give that man some credit for his role in more than 30 years of sustained growth.
I wouldn't say Ballmer isn't to blame, it's probably a half-and-half situation. There's so many stories of back-stabbing and politics taking precedence over great products that it's no surprise the company has completely stagnated. On the Ballmer front it is telling that the stock price hasn't grown since Gates stepped down, but it's impossible to prove if that's correlation or causation.
Ballmer certainly deserves more respect. Microsoft is still growing and making significantly more money at higher margins than nearly every other company on the planet.
This article was published in a week where the CEO of a major corporation admitted that he was completely wrong when he called concerns about his bank a "tempest in a teapot" just 4 weeks ago. He called his own company "sloppy" and "stupid" on national television.
Interesting that similar comments don't appear on the top when blaming Ballmar or some top exec for failures. Don't you find it hard to believe that things going badly are not the fault of the other 149999 employees that Microsoft has, as much or even more than Ballmer?
Pretty much anything from the days of yore that was done stupidly by Microsoft can be laid at Ballmer's feet, either directly, or in-directly via the company culture he fostered.
He was the reason they missed out on open source, missed out on mobile, and missed out on a ton of other stuff as he counted his money while the market slipped ahead without them.
They're better now but I don't think they'll ever be the player they were in the 2000's (and that's probably a good thing for everyone).
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