“The site glassdoor.com says the approval rating of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from his employees is the lowest of any major tech company — a dismal 40%,” Preston Gralla writes for Computerworld. “Given this latest piece of bad news, how long can he last at Microsoft?”
MacDailyNews Take: Given the amount of his MSFT shares, not to mention our prayers, hopefully he can last for a long, long time.
Gralla continues, “He has been frequently criticized by many outside of Microsoft for lacking vision. On his watch, Google zoomed to dominate Internet search, and Apple and Google have dominated the smartphone business — the two greatest growth areas in tech. Even the Microsoft board, which generally supports Ballmer, no matter what he does, has been restive… Ballmer has said that he plans to retire in 2018. Don’t count on him lasting that long.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wait until at least noon local time, then hoist a pint with the usual toast!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “SouthRoad” for the heads up.]
If the stock goes down another $4 like it did recently, it will be 7 days to the next BoD meeting, not 7 years.
I’m not sure that’s true, actually. MSFT has already lost about half of its value since Ballmer got the big chair to throw around, and I doubt that there are any MSFT shareholders left who care enough to try to fix their problems. The stock is mostly held by dullards who don’t think beyond “MS is a really big company, it must be a safe bet.”
-jcr
Microsoft shareholders don’t care about stock price, they care about dividends being paid. As long as MSFT keeps paying dividends, the shareholders will be content (notice I didn’t say “happy”).
Let’s hope he stays at M$. We don’t need him going and f@ing up an otherwise decent company.
Unless he buys said company, do you really think any would want or take him in any position.
The only way that’d happen is they put him in a separate room and get his advice and then do the opposite.
I sure as hell wouldn’t have him run my company… but I’d hire him as a sales guy in a second. Not that he really needs a job or anything.
Brilliant! Steve Ballmer, Anti-Consultant.
I’m in two minds. I’d like Ballmer to continue his stellar visionary work… heh heh but I also want to see him go so that Steve gets to finally vanquish the old Microsoft Old Guard.
Poetic justice if you like.
Shush!!! May he reign for as long as it takes.
The board are going to give Ballmer a pay rise. Firing him will cause his stock to rise by billions.
LOL!
I’m at work so I’ll have wait a bit before I bend the elbow in the usual anti-paean to the Grand Monkey Boy. But yeah until then and forever more- for as long as it takes! What is tremendously thrilling is that I might actually see this in my lifetime.
As Steve Jobs noted, Ballmer is “the sales guy”. The Board of Directors is upset because the sales guy doesn’t have vision? What do they expect? Ballmer knows how to sell stuff, not how to create it. If you want a company with vision, you damned sure don’t put a sales guy in charge of it.
——RM
He is going down with the ship and his new anchor to bring it down is Window 8.
We need Steve Ballmer to continue with his work and keep Microsoft miss firring on all cylinders!
Hey, any of you microsoft board members and stockholders reading this, please understand this negativity is just jealousy held against your fine company and its magnificent leadership. Please be assured that Mr. Ballmer is doing a bang-up job. He is every bit the technological expert as Bill Gates, and needs to be kept in place for as long as it takes.
Yes, we are so envious of MS. We wish Ballmer were running Apple, because then we would have Mac OS 9.8, the Newton 5.3, and several more generations of laser printers and maybe even a new AppleTake camera! Now that would have been much better than all this shiny i-stuff. Apple should have just stuck to what it did well, then copied all the great ideas MS has! For example, the Apple Ballmer could have made a clone of PocketPC 6.5 and called it PocketMac! Now that was a great operating system, rarely crashed more than 5 times/day, plus all the savings on data since it took so long to load a page!
This all reads like a sad “alternate reality” sci-fi story — if only, if only, if only… Sigh. Alas, we are stuck with Steve Jobs and all his crappy iPhones, iPads, MacBook Airs, and other stuff that no one really wants.
IDG has predicted Ballmer is out this year.
I sincerely believe Microsoft is weighing its options as we speak. In light of the recent announcement to join forces with Nokia, many are asking themselves how could things have devolved so far for Microsoft, and isn’t their plan to partner with Nokia a desperate attempt to remain relevant?
The real Ballmer blunder has to be introducing the Kin phone, whose OS was an inferior and diluted version of the yet to be released Win Phone 7. And then as if cooler heads prevailed we saw Kin yanked from the market just as Microsoft was on the verge of releasing WP7.
What a painfully obvious blunder! The fact that Ballmer is still the CEO speaks volumes about those who have the power to kick his ass to the curb.
I mean Apple has had its share of failures, introduced during times when Apple was trying to gain momentum in the market, only to abandon those products that failed to win mass appeal, but those instances occurred at a time when most people thought Apple no longer existed or was a subsidiary of Microsoft.
Microsoft’s blunders are painful public spectacles, and I believe the mainstream media has given them way too much latitude with their miscues. The fact is, Ballmer and Board could be paving the way for Gates to make a miraculous return to save Microsoft. The question is, is Microsoft screwed up enough that even Bill Gates wouldn’t have a hard time making the necessary course corrections?
Also, if he agreed to return to save his company, what are his chances of becoming the richest man in the world once more?
nah. Gates is no longer relevant. He has absolutely no concept of what is driving Apple to such heights. What’s he going to do, license DOS to unsuspecting Linux geeks who have no idea what DOS is? They’re so young they probably think it means “two” so they’ll buy into it. Gates’ kids are highly likely more tech savvy than the old man is.
Wow! 40% … I am shocked. That many? Did they think that Ballmer was personally sending this around trying to pick out who to give the pink slips to.
40% … that many? Keep serving the Kool-Aid, it may be working.
He can always sell used cars for my Uncle Eddie!
haha I would too hire him in a second and do the complete opposite of what he says. I’d be instantly successful.
Balmer…. the classic public bellow of “Hey, mom – look at me !!! Top of the world!!”” just flat won’t protect him anymore….
Microshaft (also known as Nokiasoft) CANNOT USE IT’S BULLY PULPIT from the PC world to try and muscle around companies in the Mobile markets… They are just too far behind.. Even rumors today about Winders 8.. It’ll probably be released by 2236 for hardware that came out late 2010 OR 2009 !!!!… I firmly believe that Balmer believes this is a GOOD strategy to get Nokiasoft back in the game….. NOT!
Bye..bye… Steve.. now we can just laugh all the time about you..relic of an ancient past and running joke of the current environment….
Remember the hundreds of millions wasted on that embarasing ad campaign with Jerry Seinfeld? Yet another Ballmer Blunder.
Despite Ballmer / Microsoft’s incompetence, they’re still making money, hand over fist. That’s the benefit of a monopoly.
Yes! No matter how stupid the products and direction, at the end of the quarter profit is always there to fund more stupid initiatives. That’s just freaking awesome!!!
You’d think that would be enough to keep him in, but shareholders (which most employees would be too) don’t like a flat stock. The only perk they have is that MS gives out dividends every quarter.
True however the small investor is not making jack squat and hasn’t for 10 years other than a measly dividend that no can make any money on unless you own one hell of a lot of shares.
[jumping up and down on a table] WHY doesn’t anyone see that Ballmer is a jackass, who would have gotten FIRED at another company long ago??? If it wasn’t for Apple, the industry would be at a stand still!!!!
Stop wishing Ballmer to go away. He needs to stay and make sure the stupid Ribbon is twice the size in screen and twice the clusterfsck it is on the next version of Windows! He should also make sure that the ribbon cannot be hidden or removed and that it’s necessary in order for Wundows to operate.
The Ribbon is the single best UI treatment to come out of Redmond. Ever.
It might not be the pantheon of visual refinement, but what it lacks in comeliness it more than makes up for in usefulness and usability.
All those features you never knew existed, or knew how to use in Excel or Word? Refactored contextualized in the Ribbon. Those insidious hierarchical menus that went on forever from right to left, and then left to right and back again? Flattened in the Ribbon. And given split icons and labels and access to keyboard shortcuts.
The Ribbon is awesome.
I don’t wish for it outside of Office on Mac, but it sure solves a lot of interface problems.
Wow. I think Ballmer needs to give you a raise! Good job laying down the BS for the Ribbon!
Windows 7 had a bit of promise… Un-refined and cryptic, yes, but more analogous to the (very fine) Windows NT 3.51 than Vista was to ubiquitous and horrible XP.
Windows 8 looks to continue the sad descent into irrelevancy, like Vista. Irrelevant — not because no one is forced to use it, but because no one really needs it, or is dying to upgrade to it. Except possibly those that are trying to escape the DLL hell that is XP or Vista, or whatever.
Maybe with Ballmer gone, MS can actually get on with its life and continue making some great modern software in the vein of Office for Mac 2011, XBox, Silverlight, and yes even IE9. Of course, none of those except for XBox are actually huge revenue streams…
Personally, I would never use the words “Microsoft” and “great…software” in the same sentence. The word “oxymoron” comes to mind.
“Of course, none of those except for XBox are actually huge revenue streams…”
Since when? XBox, the hardware, continues to lose money. It’s the software games where Microsoft make their profit. Selling the hardware at lower-than-cost is how M$ BOUGHT their way into the gaming market.
My school district is giving all staff and students Google accounts starting next year. I’m advocating that our next round of laptop or netbook purchases skip Office entirely. In fact, Windows 7 is heavy lifting for netbooks, which are really all my students will need for accessing the cloud, so if our I.T. people weren’t complete Microsoft drones, I’d push for going with Chrome. Not that Google is that much less evil right now, but the point is, Microsoft is quickly losing relevance.
yeah, but he can do that monkey dance so well. That ought to count for something?
We need Steve! All hail Steve! Long live Steve!
Aw shucks folks! Quit being mean to Steve Ballmer! He’s exactly what Microsoft deserves! 😉