Former Microsoft executive says Ballmer culls internal rivals to retain power

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-microsoft-book-idUKBRE90L04320130122

by gebe • 14 years ago

146 116 14 years ago

uk.reuters.com

chris_wot8• 14 years ago

There does seem to be a lot of own goals going on at Microsoft at the moment. But then again, some of the "talent" that has left is still making those own-goals.

Stephen Elop went to Nokia, and instead of using the one thing that I believe could have competed in the market - Maemo and then Meego - was dropped in favour of Microsoft's operating system. That's an own goal, if ever I've seen one.

So IMO, it's not really just Balmer who is at fault here, there seems to have been quite a lot of problems with even the executives leaving the company.

glass-• 14 years ago

> instead of using the one thing that I believe could have competed in the market - Maemo and then Meego

I owned an N900 and I liked it, because it had a full terminal and could run a Debian desktop on it if I really wanted to, but normal people don't care about any of that.

If Nokia had stuck with Maemo and Meego they would be in the same position as they are now, except their "ecosystem" would have less apps, less Microsoft-marketing dollars behind it, and Nokia wouldn't be getting $250 million cheques from Microsoft every quarter.

varjag• 14 years ago

Aren't those checks essentially rebates on licensing of Microsoft products?

chris_wot8• 14 years ago

I don't consider tightly coupling Nokia with Microsoft a particularly wise decision.

nonamegiven• 14 years ago

Elop: It's pretty common for a manager who made a splash at X with A to move to Y and impose A.

chollida1• 14 years ago

> Stephen Elop went to Nokia, and instead of using the one thing that I believe could have competed in the market - Maemo and then Meego - was dropped in favour of Microsoft's operating system. That's an own goal, if ever I've seen one.

SO because the new CEO adopts an OS that you don't agree with, that's automatically an "own goal"?

Remember the board and top execs at Nokia all were 100% behind the Windows phone switch, otherwise they would have brought in an exec who had a different strategy.

outside1234• 14 years ago

i was with you until you didn't say Android. they really should have picked Android and done what Samsung has done.

Tyrant505• 14 years ago

M$ is a festering money hub of individuals with indy goals reeking to create beyond the bounds.

chris_wot8• 14 years ago

You know, that would make a brilliant Haiku...

  Microsoft

  A festering money hub
  individuals with indy goals
  reeking to create beyond bounds

Of course, I could be rubbish at Haikus.

mynameishere• 14 years ago

Goddammit. I accidentally pressed the uparrow on this noise and there's no way of undoing it. Damn that is a big flaw in this software.

h2s• 14 years ago

Careful now! You wouldn't want to get caught thinking bad thoughts about HN and get hellbanned to the cornfield! Happy thoughts!

dragansah• 14 years ago

That site is awful. Almost all links are broken.

dmk23• 14 years ago

I am not sure why this is considered news. Guess just because this guy went on the record to state the obvious?

Every large company develops internal politics with various degrees of harm to itself and its performance. If the business is led by a non-founder, non-technical, non-performing CEO it is a given that he will always feel like an insecure usurper/impostor more concerned about protecting their job from rivals than actually leading.

This is yet another data point in support of Andressen Horowitz's thesis about backing founding CEOs. I might add that's also a strike against promoting a head of sales to CEO.

biot• 14 years ago

  > I am not sure why this is considered news.

In what I'm sure is purely coincidence, the former exec speaking out against Ballmer has a book coming out today on this very topic.

chris_wot8• 14 years ago

This is not just some sort of non-innovative company well know for it's vicious internal fighting like EMC. This is Microsoft, an extremely important and, yes, innovative company.

I think that this really is news - peeling back the covers to see the mess going on at Microsoft seems to my mind quite interesting.

tluyben2• 14 years ago

You can find/replace Microsoft with Oracle and many other companies though. Oracle is led by one of the founders and in many ways it's even a bigger mess there.

pbateman2• 14 years ago

It's news because Joachim Kempin has got a book to sell and he or his publishers have hired sufficient PR talent to make it news.

transitionality• 14 years ago

There was a lot of speculation as to the reasons for Sinofsky's departure a few months back. For me, at least, this item provides a likely explanation from someone who was in a position to know.

technoslut3• 14 years ago

Internal politics are one thing but I've yet to hear a story of anyone attempting to overtake Ballmer as CEO when he has Gates' backing. There were stories about the usually tight-lipped Apple and how Forstall was fired while attempting to gather more power within the software division.

The story that comes across to me is of a CEO that knows he's not doing a good enough job transitioning MS into a new era. His insecurity gets the better of him and he fires anyone who is conceived, by the media, of being a potential threat while losing major talent in the process.

vorg• 14 years ago

> Every large company develops internal politics with various degrees of harm to itself and its performance. If the business is led by a non-founder, non-technical, non-performing CEO it is a given that he will always feel like an insecure usurper/impostor more concerned about protecting their job from rivals than actually leading.

Not just large companies, but also small businesses, even open source software projects, and even those projects building a programming language.

f0552• 14 years ago

Ballmer probably knows it's his last executive position he'll ever get in this industry. So he's squeezing as much out of it as he can. Or he's just a fanboy of the "old Microsoft."

pbateman2• 14 years ago

His net worth is $15.7 billion[1] so I doubt he's concerned about "squeezing as much out of it as he can".

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer

f0552• 14 years ago

Good point, but on the other hand rich people have a weird habit of trying to get even richer. I'm not saying it's wrong btw.

sek• 14 years ago

Ballmer is so rich and so old, he couldn't event spend it if he wanted to. This is really unlikely. Have you seen his office, it's not about the money.

It's an ego thing.

Edit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20121009/us-executi...

laumars• 14 years ago

    > it's not about the money. It's an ego thing.

The two things are not always mutually exclusive. Society generally associates money with success. Thus money is the benchmark for ones ego.

Not just with CEOs as either. I often read online comments from warring zealots who proclaim "I get paid a i to do this stuff!", as if it somehow validates their claims.

OGinparadise• 14 years ago

Ballmer probably knows it's his last executive position he'll ever get in this industry. So he's squeezing as much out of it as he can.

You think he fears the high price of COBRA insurance maybe http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2011/03/11/steve-ballmer... ? Virtually any type of a job after MSFT, unless he was passionate about it (NBA team President for example) would be seen as a downgrade. Love them or hate them ...MS is minting cash and will continue to do so for a long time http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_%28MSFT%29/Data/Gro...

emeidi• 14 years ago

Never happened before in any other company.

meaty5• 14 years ago

Probably throws chairs at them...

To be serious, this is normal in most corporates. It starts when you let the MBA* with the personality disorder in, you're fucked. I've watched three companies fall at the hands of such people.

* This is not true of all MBAs, but I seem to see a trend where there are more borderline psychopaths.

panacea• 14 years ago

What's in a title? Imagine if you could come out of a computer science or design course with "Master of...[domain]" appended to your name.

The grandiouse title giving should probably be reigned in.

NickPollard• 14 years ago

You don't need to imagine; just look at any MSc or MEng.

meaty5• 14 years ago

The MBA seems to attract a certain type of person, which is my point.

I'm an MEng myself but I don't see that type of person around the whole engineering scene.

peteretep• 14 years ago

I'm on my way to being a MASTER OF SCIENCE for my computer degree... Doctor Strange better look out...

bhousel2• 14 years ago

Steve Ballmer does not have an MBA.

meaty5• 14 years ago

I should have made the more generic point "MBA types" (high business, executives etc). Not specifically MBAs.

huxley• 14 years ago

To be exact, he dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA program to join Microsoft.

rbanffy4• 14 years ago

But I wouldn't rule the personality disorder out. Neither for him, nor his predecessor.

blisterpeanuts• 14 years ago

MBA programs attract borderline personalities? That's a new one.

In reality, the MBA provides managers with a framework to conduct business in a methodical manner. It gives them a process to use, so that their personalities don't have to be such a large factor.

I've never done an MBA but I know many who have; it's mostly case studies and common sense. If you ONLY have an MBA and no other particular expertise, then yes, you are just another talking head. But if you are an ME or EE or SWE with an MBA then you have a formidable set of skills to draw on.

ryanmolden• 14 years ago

People that rank on the Hare scale of psycopathy are over-represented (relative to prevalence in broader society) in corporate C-suites, controlling for age, gender, race, etc...[0] I am not sure what the representation of MBAs is in the C-suite but I assume it is also fairly high. I do not believe the book examines the representation amongst MBAs specifically, though.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Suits-When-Psychopaths-Work/dp/...

dpark3• 14 years ago

> This is not true of all MBAs, but I seem to see a trend where there are more borderline psychopaths.

You "seem to see a trend"? On what is this observation based? On your detailed survey of the published clinical literature? Maybe on all the research you collated while assisting in the latest revision of the DSM? Perhaps on the personality assessments you've performed as part of a dissertation for your doctorate in psychology?

Or perhaps on nothing, and instead you are in no way qualified to make this sort of claim.

meaty5• 14 years ago

I'm not qualified to make that claim at all.

However, there is plenty of literature that backs up my claims by people who do have the qualifications. Someone actually posted a good reference in another reply:

http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Suits-When-Psychopaths-Work/dp/...

mossplix2• 14 years ago

CEOs hardly matter in big corporations . I don't see hiring a 35-40 yr old CEO moving Microsoft in a new direction.

mossplix2• 14 years ago

http://www.forbes.com/sites/giovannirodriguez/2012/08/15/do-...

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/20/magazines/fortune/stats_CEO_...

for the down votters

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

Is Microsoft the last big company? They had to grow to that size to handle the marketing and distribution globally - their most obvious successor is Google who operate at a similar reach but something like 1/10 of people

It might be an inevitability - or it might be that giant companies are just of their time and giant will now be in the thousands not the hundreds of thousands

Anyway it's not news.

stonemetal• 14 years ago

Microsoft is much more diversified than Google. If Google becomes as diversified as MS then there is a good chance they will catch up on head count.

rpm4321• 14 years ago

Interestingly enough, Larry Page is on record recently talking about the possibility of Google scaling up to a million employees:

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Lar...

chris_wot8• 14 years ago

... and thus causing massive destabilization in whole economies. No thanks!

Think about it. If a corporation employs 1 million employees, and that company fails, then the economy will most definitely take a hit. On top of this, that company would hold far too much power and could use the power of the number of people working for it to force governments into doing things that it wouldn't do for the greater good. It happens already now with big business, but just imagine what it would be like with a million employee business!

andyjohnson0• 14 years ago

There are many companies that are much larger than Microsoft in terms of number of employees. Microsoft employs 94,420 people worldwide [1], but by this measure it isn't even in the top 100 of the Inc 5000 according to [2].

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx#Employmen...

[2] http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/top/employee-count

16s• 14 years ago

Intel has more than 100k employees.

arethuza2• 14 years ago

Probably worth looking at the Fortune Global 500 to see lists of really large companies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500

e.g. Walmart has 2.2 million employees

masklinn• 14 years ago

> Is Microsoft the last big company? They had to grow to that size to handle the marketing and distribution globally - their most obvious successor is Google who operate at a similar reach but something like 1/10 of people

Er... Google has about half MSFT's employees, Apple and Amazon have about 75%, Intel has slightly more employees than MSFT. And they're not huge companies in terms of employees headcount: retail groups are in the multiple hundred thousands (Walmart 2m, Tesco and Carrefour 500k), Automotive groups are also up there (VW 500k, Toyota 300k, GM and Daimler >250k), etc...

Nursie• 14 years ago

MS is about a quarter the size of IBM in terms of employees.

alisnic• 14 years ago

I may be wrong, but I always had the impression on Ballmer as a weird (in a bad sense weird) and inadequate guy. I also usually give credit to him for all ”WTF MS?” moments.

guitarhacks• 14 years ago

I think this is hillarious, Ballmers best moments. http://youtu.be/e8M6S8EKbnU

maked00• 14 years ago

Well duh. Find one CEO of any Fortune 500 company who does not.

hzay• 14 years ago

This article is a piece of uninteresting, content-free, gossipy garbage and I'm not sure why it was voted to the front page. This guy doesn't like Ballmer and he writes a book about it and that's news?

brudgers3• 14 years ago

Every call for Ballmer's ouster ignores two important points. He is the second largest shareholder. His college buddy is the largest.

No analyst has clout with the shareholders. Nobody inside does either.

What I see in Sinofsky's departure is a clear signal that the type of politics which this article assumes to be the proper way of creating succession is being deprecated within Microsoft. What I mean is that the argument is premised upon the idea that rivalries at the executive level should be acceptable.

Just because that is the way most public corporations work, doesn't mean it ought to be the way. Gates and Ballmer have been running Microsoft for thirty years. They've got real long term interest in creating a sustainable culture.

chuckmans3• 14 years ago

> Every call for Ballmer's ouster ignores two important points. He is the second largest shareholder. His college buddy is the largest.

This is an important point. These types of articles imply that he's running the company as an ego trip instead of a heavily-invested individual shareholder. Very key to keep in mind.

brudgers3• 14 years ago

He was given founder's equity despite not being a founder because he was brought onboard to run the business side of the business.

rbanffy4• 14 years ago

> He is the second largest shareholder. His college buddy is the largest.

Being a college buddy of one of the founders hardly qualifies someone to run a multibillion dollar company.

mseebach• 14 years ago

It also doesn't disqualify someone. At the end of the day, it's the shareholders decision.

brudgers3• 14 years ago

Well, he has a dozen years experience doing it. He brought about the IPO. He's been the business partner for thirty years. Who would be more qualified?

nanook• 14 years ago

In a parallel universe: Gates returns, fires Ballmer and turns MS around. Reality: He's probably happier solving much bigger problems in the world.

But still, it sucks to see someone drive his company to the ground. Has Ballmer ever done anything right for Microsoft? I can't think of anything.

technoslut3• 14 years ago

He's kept the ship afloat and is good at maximizing profits from MS's traditional businesses. The problem is that Ballmer isn't the person you need in a transitional phase for a company.

bad_user• 14 years ago

Gates was that guy.

Remember when they haven't shipped a web browser in Windows 95 and then they turned around and produced a kickass browser that killed Netscape Navigator? Or how MS Word took marketshare from WordPerfect like taking candy from a baby? Or how Win 95 won against IBM's OS/2, even though OS/2 was also binary compatible with DOS and Win3.11?

moheeb• 14 years ago

"Turns MS around" into what? Failure?

Microsoft seems like a successful company to me. I don't get it.

vijayr• 14 years ago

I hope he doesn't come back, and he keeps working for his foundation. What he is doing is much more important than a single for-profit company

codingthebeach• 14 years ago

MS revenues have grown by 45 billion dollars under Ballmer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer). Without Ballmer .NET would not have existed and the XBox would not exist as it exists today. I have no great love for the guy but I've yet to read a convincing argument for his ouster. Just priggish former executives badmouthing the company that lifted them into the 1%.

gdilla2• 14 years ago

imho, the biggest reason for his ouster was that he had no internet strategy - his plan A was buying Yahoo. No innovation, no imagination, no results.

jmspring3• 14 years ago

Web strategy? Like media? Does a technology company need to have a content/media component -- which Yahoo basically is.

Azure is a decent extension to the MS development ecosystem. Xbox and Xbox Live seem to be doing well -- I don't use either. Bing, while not Google, has it's fans.

Where MSFT was late to the game is in their approach to the post-PC era. WinCE/WinMo were "ok" at the time, then the iPhone came along. Win8, Surface, WP8 are all relatively new - do I expect the same success as, say, XP or the like? Not really, but that path is still playing out for them.

hkarthik• 14 years ago

Saying Ballmer is responsible for the existence of both .NET and Xbox is like saying Al Gore invented the internet.

There were lots of very smart leaders and engineers involved in the creation of both of those and their contributions far outweigh Ballmer's decision to "green light" those projects back in the late 90s.

nitid_name• 14 years ago

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

I don't know, it seems fair to say that the person who made decisions about the direction of development that fostered the development has a claim on having caused said development.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

Up until 2008 Bill Gates was running MS. From 2008 to today, the period of time when Ballmer was in charge and on his own, MS's revenue has grown by only 17%, adjusted for inflation. That's only 4% a year.

zachinglis2• 14 years ago

Let's not forget their market share has dropped. A company is measured by it's today, and it's tomorrow.

George_ns• 14 years ago

"They don't need this guy on stage with this fierce, aggressive look" ...yeah i bet Paul Allen would second that.

TheLarch2• 14 years ago

Kempin is of dubious character:

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/04/ms_execs_hunting_tri...;

TheLarch2• 14 years ago

Whoops broken linky:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/04/ms_execs_hunting_tri...

Former Microsoft executive says Ballmer culls internal rivals to retain power

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