He decimated shareholder equity during his term. He seems intent on making a mockery of his own company. The new Zune product is garbage (takes 6-30 seconds to load apps and you are forced to watch advertizements) Xbox360 is still not generating positive profits to offset the huge losses.
How an idiot like Ballmer ever got to be the CEO of Microsoft in the first place is a mystery that I will never understand. Bill Gates is one of the smartest guys around, but keeping Ballmer around for so long had to be his all-time stupidest decision. And it was so obvious right from the beginning... would you want this guy running your multi-billion dollar corporation??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
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I have met Balmer (and Gates too in person) while working at MSFT ( in the 80's) Balmer was our project director at the IBM/MSFT joint project I was assigned to.....(care to guess what OS?) anyways, he came to our weekly project meeting and he then struck me as a person with a loose screw. For one instance he laid down on the floor....during our meeting and managed to carry a conversation while in that position.... He should have been locked up then and gates should have found a better CEO...... just my 2 cents....
the secret is they were school mates at Harvard... strongest bond rightly or wrongly with people is romanticized school fraternity.
Actually, I think I know what it is. Gates is a shy, quiet, withdrawn, internally focused person. His strength is in seeing the big picture of things, and understanding where supply/demand for technology is going to go in an aggregate way... but what he is NOT experienced at, and certainly wasn't a few decades ago, is in reading and understanding people on a personal level. To a quiet nerd like Gates, a brash loud talker like Ballmer might seem appealing: "Here's a guy who is good at all the things I'm am not good at: talking to people, convincing them to buy our product and/or work with us, etc... I'll just hire him and let him handle all that stuff so I can concentrate on what's important to me!". I've seen this before, where a shy/quiet entrepreneur type gets a salesman-type of partner because he thinks it's going to compensate for all of his weaknesses. Usually it doesn't work out, as the loud idiot ends up causing a lot more trouble than he's worth... but the Gates type will often stick loyally with him for a long time, and because of the personality difference will often not have the balls to challenge and/or get rid of him, unless the guy REALLY screws up. Ballmer might very well be an intimidating type of person to someone like Gates. Einstein was a genius too, but wasn't the smartest guy in his personal life... just because you're smart in one area, doesn't mean you're smart in all areas.
+5 for the psychology... but as I say for some reason their bonding goes back to their youth (college year at Harvbard) when Bill made his first million and wrote a check to the IRS for the half....they almost sent it back but he knew that there was plenty more where the first mill came from.. Balmer (the fool) actually graduated