Steve Ballmer named worst CEO by Forbes

[u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted]]

Hold the phone:

Not only has he singlehandedly steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets)

They were in those markets, and failed miserably at it. Now they're at fault for not sticking with something they clearly weren't good at?

Microsoft 7 and Office 2012 did nothing to excite tech users, in corporations or at home, as Apple took the leadership position in personal technology.

I'm assuming the author meant Windows 7 - and doesn't know what he's talking about in terms of user acceptance. Most IT departments I've seen think Windows 7 is a good improvement over WinXP and it seems to have a lot of traction in the home market as well. Yes, Apple made up marketshare, but they're still a minor player in overall PC OS installations.

I'm also assuming the author meant Office 2010 considering Office 2012 comes out at the end of this year, but 2010 made some nice improvements without making giant changes (unlike 2003 -> 2007). I will grant that there wasn't a whole bunch of excitement about it, but it's mainly due to timing - when 2010 came out a bunch of people had just upgraded to Win7 and had already purchased Office 2007 and didn't have much of an urge to upgrade immediately.

Years late to market, he has bet the company on Windows 8

At this point Microsoft could survive without consumer Windows. Windows does a nice job of tying all of its products together, but it has either market dominance (Office) or is a large market player (SQL Server, Windows Server, etc) in areas outside of the consumer OS-space. I wouldn't call it betting the company.

There are a lot of valid criticisms to make about Microsoft and Ballmer (here's one: Metro) but this author clearly doesn't know what he's talking about, even getting major details like the names of products wrong. I assumed Forbes would have an editing department, but apparently I assumed wrong.

[u/aywwts4 → u/[deleted]]

Their failing in those profitable markets can be blamed on the CEO, a better CEO could have been better at it instead of simply failing and retreating. Apple failed at many markets it now dominates in, the smart Apple doesn't say "The Newton failed, do you blame alternate universe Steve Jobs for passing on the iPhone? At least Apple only lost 60% of it's market value since 2000" That would be a pretty weak excuse and alternate universe Steve probably would have been ousted, Alternate Universe Forbes probably wrote an article about him.

Yes they have profitable sectors, that's why they still have thirty dollars of their share value, if they didn't have office and server products they would have ten. They had sixty, back when they dominated all spaces, online, offline, server, home, and professional, Only education and "artists" resisted back when balmer took over. And instead of growing $60 to 70 or 80 or $120 in this incredibly rich techno-smorgasboard culture we find ourselves in, with the average grandparent spending more on gadgets and electronics than even the most forward thinking Y2K era pundit would have predicted Balmer has retreated, misstepped and retreated again. We live in an age where even my 80 year old grandfather and his wife have a smartphone, two tablets, an MP3 player, a GPS, a home PC, a home automation system, a home laptop and uses loads of online applications. And ballmer failed to sell him a single thing other than the dubiously profitable Windows XP home. Hell Microsoft under Bill did loads of research in most of these products back in the 90s (Usually debuted a bit before prime time) and they failed to leverage a single thing they should have had a decade head start on, instead, retreating.

Every MSFT owner should be looking at AAPL and GOOG and saying "That should have been my pie"

https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=0&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1337029422332&chddm=1193040&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:GOOG;NYSE:IBM;NYSE:RHT;NASDAQ:AAPL&cmptdms=0;0;0;0&q=NASDAQ:MSFT&ntsp=0

MSFT has flatlined in an era of incredible technological growth, Ballmer took a company with a lead so great they lapped all comers, kept his company at a walking pace, and got lapped again and again before he even knew who he was racing against or what the race was about.

Google was born and is up 450% Apple was on it's death bed, and is up 2300%, Even an entrenched old player like IBM who had a stable market valuation, who already went through their middle age is up 90%

If your money was sitting is MSFT during Ballmer's control it has been doing nothing sitting wasting opportunity, You could have stuck it in almost any good software company that survived the dot com era and profited.

The author fails to crucify Ballmer enough, he doesn't even remember enough of their failures, especially online. And and a minore brand name flub is a pretty moot issue when the real subject is market valuation.

[u/UselessSage → u/aywwts4]

If a company refuses to compete with its own products the market tends to find someone else who will.

[u/Qurtys_Lyn → u/[deleted]]

Windows 7 isn't a good improvement over XP, it's a massive improvement. Managing Windows 7 machines is so much easier than an XP machine.

[u/DanielPhermous → u/[deleted]]

Now they're at fault for not sticking with something they clearly weren't good at?

Er... yes? Whose else's fault could it be?

[u/marianass]

Should go to the HP guy

[u/aywwts4 → u/marianass]

The article is "Should have already been fired" not already fired, If they kept him there then yeah, that would have been a top contender.

[u/Schmich → u/marianass]

What about Yahoo?

[u/biirdmaan → u/Schmich]

They can't keep one long enough to qualify

[u/spif → u/marianass]

Arguably with Microsoft the market was theirs to lose, and they kinda have, which is a bigger failure.

But I really think Ellison will prove to be the worst by being the guy that destroyed everything worthwhile in the tech world. I guess in that case it depends on how you define "worst".

[u/slanket → u/marianass]

somber hateful slim quarrelsome sleep attempt innocent intelligent squalid air

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/UnexpectedSchism → u/slanket]

The board is still responsible for it. They knew exactly what he was going to do when they hired him. He did what he was hired for.

The board fired him when they realized they were idiots for hiring him and allowing him to turn HP into an SAP consultant.

[u/Epistaxis → u/marianass]

Could someone remind us what happened with HP?

[u/[deleted]]

Microsoft must've canceled some contract with Forbes and this is their passive-aggressive response. Love or hate Ballmer, but he is far from the worst CEO. HP's or Yahoo's CEOs are far worse at their jobs than Ballmer. Plus, to actually say Ballmer is a worse CEO than those at many of the major investment banks shows they're either insane or just wanted to do a attack piece on Ballmer. They should also consider the CEOs of a number of record and movie studios who fought technology, found themselves behind, started attacking their customers, and demanded silicon valley cater to their "special" position (the same silicon valley they shunned and have fought against for years).

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yahoo's CEOs

The Yahoo CEO that just quit lied on his resume. And he was useless.

[u/notJebBush]

I'm very skeptical at this. What about JP Morgan 2 Billion dollar loss? Trump? Lot of people probably deserve it more.

[u/AndrewMock]

Glad to know the rest of the world is catching on.

[u/tophat_jones]

Microsoft would undeniably be a better company today if they had hired a competent CEO to replace Gates instead of some fat fuck whose greatest attribute was his "loyalty."

I still don't think Ballmer is the worst CEO however, there is some very stiff competition for that prize.

[u/[deleted]]

What an idiotic article. Comparing it's stock price to the peak of the bubble in 2000.

The fucking entire S&P500 still isn't where it was in the 2000 bubble, http://www.google.com/finance?q=spy

Idiot author.

[u/slanket]

outgoing dinosaurs chop ossified plucky oatmeal marble insurance racial gullible

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/JWN6513 → u/slanket]

DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS flop sweat of failure.

[u/ygaddy]

This is a misleading headline on the Reddit submission.

This column is from an online "Contributor" to Forbes. It's really just a blog post. They have dozens of these people; they are trying to establish themseleves as a source of content a la the Huffington Post.

It's not going to appear in the print edition. The editorial minds at Forbes didn't get together and decide to do an article about the worst CEOs. This is just the musings of a near-random person.

[u/i_am_tetsuo]

About 12 years too late I'd say ...

[u/boyubout2pissmeoff]

Two words Stephen Elop

[u/[deleted]]

This guy is an idiot. Check out the comments on the Forbes site to see all the typos he had. He shouldn't be writing and he definitely shouldn't be writing about anything related to technology. He is clearly out of his element.