“Senior Microsoft executives, disenchanted with the company’s stagnant stock, have been secretly discussing how to kick Chief Steve Ballmer, and maybe the board, to the curb,” Peter Lauria reports for The Daily Beast. “An emotional tribute to his 30 years of service nearly brought Microsoft’s testosterone-fueled CEO Steve Ballmer to tears yesterday in front of more than 10,000 employees gathered in Atlanta for the software giant’s annual global sales meeting.”
“‘He was rendered completely speechless,’ a tweet from one of the conference’s attendees reported. ‘Incredibly intense and moving experience.’ According another Microsoft executive at the conference, there may be a reason for the drama other than gratitude: Ballmer may not be at Microsoft when next year’s event rolls around,” Lauria reports. “‘It felt like it could have been a sign of his last mgx [Microsoft Global Experience],’ wrote this insider in a text message to me. ‘A farewell?’ Indeed, this executive and several other sources close to Microsoft say that there is a growing resentment among a faction of certain executives inside the company who blame Ballmer for the years-long stagnation in Microsoft’s stock price.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, by the way: JP Morgan ups Apple price target to $400 – July 21, 2010
Lauria continues, “Sources say the talk around Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters—which has grown increasingly louder ever since Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization–is that the company’s stock suffers from a ‘Ballmer discount’ and that the CEO is on the clock to significantly move the needle on its share price over the next two or three quarters or face a potential move to oust him. ‘Ballmer is on the list of mega-executives under pressure,’ says a banker who has negotiated deals for Microsoft. ‘If he was asked to leave the building, I suspect there would be more happy than unhappy people.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Wait until Microsoft confirms that Apple have zipped past them in quarterly revenue, too.
Lauria continues, “There are also two powerful intangibles that will make it difficult for any group, however sizable, to remove Ballmer: Microsoft’s board supports him unwaveringly, and there’s no obvious successor that could easily slide into his post.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Leave him be. He’s doing an excellent job.*
*For Apple.
On the bright side, if he’s fired, maybe his kids can finally buy iPods.
No CEO can be like Jobs. Jobs’ brilliance is not only his vision, but his ability to HIRE and keep brilliant people around himself.
That is not the case in most other companies, MSFT included. Even if Ballmer goes, there is no one who can reign in the diverse, self-delusional executive teams within MSFT.
Then they still have to deal with the legacy OS(s) that is too bloated to ever evolve back down to a lean, cloud-based, machine, and an ever changing *framework* of devloper tools.
“Developers, developers, developers, developers…”
Can Ballmer????!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
NO!!!!
They should give Ballmer True Dictator Status : “CEO for Life”.
(I am an Apple Investor.)
Raise a toast to Ballmer, May he serve another 30 years (or until he runs the company into the ground)!!!!!!!!
Leeeeeaavve Balmer ALLLLLLOOOONNNNEEE!!!!
Jeez, they really need to get rid of that idiot Ballmer. What the hell is wrong with the board? I see why there is a trouble brewing amongst the stockholders.
The board gets what they deserve – Ballmer’s an idiot.
@chaz,
While I agree with you mostly, I have to say HP *has* its own OS – HP-UX, which is not a bad UNIX flavor in itself. The inability to evolve HP-UX out of the server box, or take on IBM with HP’s own move toward Linux and open source, do not inspire me to believe their WebOS effort will go anywhere far. On top of it they have to deal with their hardware, which suck. But at least they hired some new blood, and perhaps the internal culture is changing too.
Dear Microsoft Board, Everyone at Apple and all of its users really like your strategy — we like it a lot! Keep up the great work!
Usually, I hate to see someone lose a job. That is especially true in this case. I would love Ballmer to keep Microsoft in “suit in a boardroom” mode.
I suspect that his final attempts to save himself will involve uber-suit-in-a-boardroom mode, striving for short term gains and killing products that don’t have all the buttons/features/USB ports that the focus groups ask for. Not that MS won’t still be terrifically economically healthy and viable. They will. They’ll just keep producing shit products for another year, getting behind the curve even further.
Maybe MS should hire Michael Dell and his minion, Rob “Group” Enderle.
What’s John Sculley, Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio doing these days I am sure they would be more than willing to give Microsoft the kind of boost they are famous for.
Watch for crazy shenanigans to improve the quarterly numbers. What so many businesses have done over the years, at the expense of the long-term good of the company. He could manipulate them for at least two or three quarters. He may be around six to nine months.
Oh, no. I’ll be a bad, sad day for Apple when Ballmer leaves….
Getting rid of Ballmer is not going to solve anything. Look at all of the shitty products they’d have to clear out along with the guy to save the company. Leave him in. As MDN would say, “For as long as it takes…”
We need to do a letter campaign. We have to save Ballmer. He must never ever leave Microsoft!!!!
@chaz
Understood, but the computing and consumer products industry moves so quickly now they would have even less time to turn things around. If this was happening in 2002, even 2005 they would have the breathing space to reorganise and come back fighting. In 2011, with Apple, Google, even now HP all stealing customers away from the Microsoft ecosystem in ever increasing numbers the chances of someone new spending two years to turn the company round and succeeding are tiny. Ballmer needs to realise that, get his team together and come up with a strategy for the post-Windows world.
Because that’s where things are now heading. Windows has had its day. Even “Mac” OSX has had its day, although that will temporarily grow as it eats into what’s left of the Windows userbase. We’re going through the biggest paradigm change now since the original WIMP GUIs started to appear.
Only Ballmer has the opportunity to prevent Microsoft being turned into the next Novell. Whether Ballmer has the capability is questionable, but he may yet surprise us all.
@Justatecfan:
No, it’s not the iPhone that is the dagger that kills MS. It was OS X that was the poison administered years ago. OS X enabled everything else, from the Mac to the iPod to the iPhone. It’s all based on OS X, and it would take MS 5 years to duplicate it at a minimum, if they started tomorrow.
But it’s not happening. MS is dead, with or without Ballmer.
“Microsoft’s board supports him unwaveringly, and there’s no obvious successor that could easily slide into his post.” That’s Microsoft for you – a talent pool a mile wide and an inch deep. They’d likely need an outsider, someone of the caliber of a Jack Welch (GE) or Louis Gerstner (IBM) who helped save their companies and drive them to new heights. (Of course, in those cases there was something worth saving.)
As to why he’s stuck around this long, Ballmer happens to own a few billion dollars in Microsoft stock. The presumption that when one has a financial stake he will act wisely apparently doesn’t apply to Ballmer.
<i><u>Please</u><i> keep Balmer at Microsoft. He is good for increasing the value of my stock in a computer company.
If we are unfortunate enough that Steve Ballmer has to leave Microsoft. Maybe we can get him a job with HP, Dell, or some other struggling PC box maker or smart phone maker. It is hard to find such a clueless person (OUT SIDE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT) that can help tank Apple’s competitors.
@Dave H
Agreed. When Jobs made the move from OS9 to OS X, well it was huge. The timing was really a test of a CEO. Making that decision, with the Mac base in total disarray, I’m quite sure there were lot’s of people saying lets just throw in the towel and get on with life in a Windows world.
That point right there, and Jobs impeccable leadership through that platform change cemented him in my view as the best tech CEO in history. And he may well have been the only person on the planet with enough credibility to pull it off.
Ballmer on the other hand can’t step up to making the changes necessary to Microsoft’s core technology to position it to be able to innovate at the rate of it’s peers. Lord knows he doesn’t know the direction to head, and he certainly doesn’t have the capability to sell it to his market.
M$ missed the train at least 5 years ago with multiple inaccurate predictions of where the puck was gonna be today. Apple and Google got it close. Blackberry missed the train by 2 years and is super-struggling to invent something just to hang onto the caboose. It all really comes down to inventing simple portable solutions that people really lust after.
The turtle won the race.
For God’s sake. Ballmer is one of the Great Thinkers®™© of our time. The media follows Monkey Boy everywhere he goes so they can catch his every utterance of wisdom regarding where technology is heading. How could they?
How could they?
@Raymond: “As to why he’s stuck around this long, Ballmer happens to own a few billion dollars in Microsoft stock. The presumption that when one has a financial stake he will act wisely apparently doesn’t apply to Ballmer.”
It also allows you to vote for friendly board members.
Ballmer can stay as long as he likes. As long as he stays there, Apple with thrive and MS will dive!!!!!