Steve Ballmer Was "Forced Out"

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This ComputerWorld article is claiming that Steve Ballmer was "forced out by the board," contrary to Microsoft's claim that its CEO is retiring. Obviously this is just an analyst guessing but it does seem plausible. What do you think? Thanks to [H] forum member mobusta1 for the link.

Steve Ballmer was forced out of his CEO chair by Microsoft's board of directors, who hit the roof when the company took a $900 million write-off to account for an oversupply of the firm's struggling Surface RT tablet, an analyst argued today.
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It's possible, but I doubt we'll ever know with any certainty. Besides, it's not like the surface RT is MS' only failure/screwup over the past few years. They've had plenty(and I'm not talking about omg xbone spies on me, or omg wheres my start menu either). The surface RT may be the straw that broke the camel's back, but everything else is also to blame, possibly more so.
 
I would imaging the Board Meeting went something like this:

Board: Ballmer! ZOMG WTF?!?! $900m loss FTL?!?!
Ballmer: I didn't do it! You can't prove I did!
Board: Take 12 months to gather up your office full of broken chairs and GTFO! We'll even pay you to leave!
Ballmer: Are you going to cancel my XBLive Acct?
Board: No. Just GTFO < 12 Months, n00b!
Ballmer: Ok. P.S. I slept with your mom!, LOL
 
Gates was trying to avoid a very nasty and public proxy fight with the rest of the board for the future of the company. I think Ballmer understood that Bill could no longer defend him so he did his buddy and the rest of the employees a solid and retired.

Now that he is gone we should really move on. I love me some M$ dev tools, they're the best in the biz (can't say the same about their native platforms, so we should start there).
 
I thought everyone knew that "retired" was just an euphemism for "fired" when it comes to CEO's.
 
It's very likely since he said he wanted to go earlier but didn't think the timing was right.

I bet the board said now is the right time. Get out.
 
Koolthulu said:
I thought everyone knew that "retired" was just an euphemism for "fired" when it comes to CEO's.
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Yea but depending on the word used officially...changes how mich the stock price should drop.
 
When a guy that likes to run things his way or the highway, and not take advice or opinions of staff, yeah your company will hit a wall (I don't remember who wrote the book about working at Microsoft, but when Ballmer held meetings, he wandered around the room with a baseball bat, like he thought he was Al Capone).
 
DPI said:
You mean like .net?
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Yeah, Java and Eclipse for example is a joke next to .NET and Visual Studio. Obj-C and Xcode still kick my ass and I've been doing this for over a decade - Apple cares very little for developers as they put all their man power on product development (which is fine I guess).

Also, Visual C++ and the JavaScript code editor are top notch. Then you have your backend support SQL Server (native) and Azure (cloud) and so on and so forth (reporting, analytics, hadoop support for Big Data, etc.).

If I could officially develop iOS apps in Visual Studio I would be gilded. This is what the new CEO needs to make happen.
 
Terminus said:
Yeah, Java and Eclipse for example is a joke next to .NET and Visual Studio. Obj-C and Xcode still kick my ass and I've been doing this for over a decade - Apple cares very little for developers as they put all their man power on product development (which is fine I guess).

Also, Visual C++ and the JavaScript code editor are top notch. Then you have your backend support SQL Server (native) and Azure (cloud) and so on and so forth (reporting, analytics, hadoop support for Big Data, etc.).

If I could officially develop iOS apps in Visual Studio I would be gilded. This is what the new CEO needs to make happen.
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QFT.
 
Terminus said:
Yeah, Java and Eclipse for example is a joke next to .NET and Visual Studio. Obj-C and Xcode still kick my ass and I've been doing this for over a decade - Apple cares very little for developers as they put all their man power on product development (which is fine I guess).

Also, Visual C++ and the JavaScript code editor are top notch. Then you have your backend support SQL Server (native) and Azure (cloud) and so on and so forth (reporting, analytics, hadoop support for Big Data, etc.).

If I could officially develop iOS apps in Visual Studio I would be gilded. This is what the new CEO needs to make happen.
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Except... .net was abandoned by MS
 
Apple understands their market segment is entertainment, and they do that segment very well. Microsoft needs to stop trying to be someone else and just worry about their market segment, which is business licensing. With all the money they have lost on Surface and Xbox, has there been enough profit to make up for that? Just do what you do, and do it well.
 
Trimlock said:
you can't be serious?
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A lot of people equate Silverlight with .NET and unfortunately Microsoft wasn't as forthcoming with the state of SL as it needed to be. But in the era of the plug-in free web and HTML 5, there really wasn't a need for SL. The .NET platform does continue to evolve and is core development environment for Modern apps, which would hardly be the case if it had been abandoned.
 
I don't think its just Windows Tablets taking a 900 million loss

I think its that + Windows 8 reception/ratings + Xbox one's initial policies

Just with Ballmer in charge, he stopped caring what customers wanted and started demanding what customers buy, I think he just assumed he could do no wrong

That and he ran out of fucking scapegoats, fuck he's fired like 5 major people in the last 2 years covering up his shit
 
ShamisOMally said:
I don't think its just Windows Tablets taking a 900 million loss

I think its that + Windows 8 reception/ratings + Xbox one's initial policies

Just with Ballmer in charge, he stopped caring what customers wanted and started demanding what customers buy, I think he just assumed he could do no wrong

That and he ran out of fucking scapegoats, fuck he's fired like 5 major people in the last 2 years covering up his shit
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You're forgetting MS' failure to get as big in VM's as VMware did even though they bundle a hypervisor with windows server. The original xbox 360 hardware problems. The failure that was "zune". MS' massively delayed push with bing that should have happened 5 years earlier. There are probably a lot of other examples that people can cite, but the DRM policies of the xbox one that hasn't even launched yet are minimal by comparison to the other massive screwups at MS over the past 10 years.
 
The board should tell him that his golden parachute was the $900m write-off and that he won't be getting any compensation. Too bad, so sad.
 
Really breaks my heart...
Whats he gonna do for the rest of his life...
I mean, since he doesn't have a job he won't have much money to spend or anything...
Maybe he can get an unemployment check to tide him over...
 
BryanSTG said:
The board should tell him that his golden parachute was the $900m write-off and that he won't be getting any compensation. Too bad, so sad.
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Won't happen, and if it did he has more money than a sane person could spend in a lifetime.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
Won't happen, and if it did he has more money than a sane person could spend in a lifetime.
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Generally Microsoft doesn't offer golden parachutes to its retiring execs which normally doesn't matter because most of these guys are rich, super rich or ultra rich as in Ballmer's case. He became a billionaire long before he was CEO with his stake in Microsoft.
 
heatlesssun said:
A lot of people equate Silverlight with .NET and unfortunately Microsoft wasn't as forthcoming with the state of SL as it needed to be. But in the era of the plug-in free web and HTML 5, there really wasn't a need for SL. The .NET platform does continue to evolve and is core development environment for Modern apps, which would hardly be the case if it had been abandoned.
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Didnt think it was common to confuse SL with .NET.
 
there is only ONE person to blame for ever bringing Ballmer on board in any capacity whatsoever, let alone putting him in the position of CEO to act as the public-facing image of MS, & we all know who that is
 
There are plenty of people who shine when in the #2 position but fail when promoted.
 
Steve said:
This ComputerWorld article is claiming that Steve Ballmer was "forced out by the board," contrary to Microsoft's claim that its CEO is retiring. Obviously this is just an analyst guessing but it does seem plausible. What do you think? Thanks to [H] forum member mobusta1 for the link.
Click to expand...

This is what I figured happened. You don't get to make a $900 MILLION dollar mistake and not face repercussions, even if you're Steve Ballmer.
 
Merc1138 said:
You're forgetting MS' failure to get as big in VM's as VMware did even though they bundle a hypervisor with windows server. The original xbox 360 hardware problems. The failure that was "zune". MS' massively delayed push with bing that should have happened 5 years earlier. There are probably a lot of other examples that people can cite, but the DRM policies of the xbox one that hasn't even launched yet are minimal by comparison to the other massive screwups at MS over the past 10 years.
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Don't forget Kin (though, importantly most people never remember it coming out in the first place), the near constant reworking and rebranding of everything (Hotmail, MSN, Messenger, Live, and more), his owning up to Vista's poor adoption, the abysmal sales of Windows Phone and how they were years late to the party... Microsoft has had some great successes under Sir Sweats-a-Lot but they've also had a lot of very costly fumbles.
 
The difference between forced retirement and voluntary retirement is that in the later, the retiree can recognize the signs. No one needs to say a thing.
 
Well we need to move forward, find some one competent enough to take the company in the right direction.
 
maademperor said:
you are thinking of silver light,dude. different animals from the same zoo but .net is not abandoned
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No I am thinking of .net, but since you mention SL yes plenty of programmers bought in, got up to speed and were left twisting in the wind. As for .net maybe abandoned was the wrong word but "sidelined" doesn't go far enough given I constantly read .net programmers complaoning about its second class status in Win8/Metro and MS's general direction going forward.

Lets put it this way how many metro apps are built on .net
 
DPI said:
No I am thinking of .net, but since you mention SL yes plenty of programmers bought in, got up to speed and were left twisting in the wind. As for .net maybe abandoned was the wrong word but "sidelined" doesn't go far enough given I constantly read .net programmers complaoning about its second class status in Win8/Metro and MS's general direction going forward.

Lets put it this way how many metro apps are built on .net
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The technology behind modern UI applications is .NET 4.5. So I would say ALL of them. Now the language maybe a little different but it is .NET. What people are complaining about is the shift from WINFORM style applications so yes even for a .NET developer their is a learning curve to writing modern UI applications but it is still .NET at the core.
 
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