> If you’re a non genius who hasn’t formed a globally important company in your early 20s — and especially if you’re funny looking — you’ll probably learn more from Ballmer than you can from Jobs.
Just because it's funny doesn't mean it's not true!
That's exactly what Microsoft, and especially Ballmer, never did. As the author points out, maybe Steve Jobs crashing your party would make the other guests feel less cool, but the reality is that a lot of people want to be hangers-on and aren't sufficiently introspective to feel uncool about it. The completion of the analogy is that Jobs got a lot of your guests to pay him $300 for the privilege of following him to crash the next party, while Ballmer brought $20 worth of bad vodka, then robbed your apartment while you were passed out. They both made money without creating much value; the difference is at whose expense they did so.
you are right that he deserves some credit, it just always irks me that the cult follower types seem to think he was single handedly responsible for all of the success of apple.
like most CEOs he set a direction, and it was the people underneath him that took the company there under his guidance, but without that direction nothing would have happened. (or something else would have happened)
it also does it with an original (or at least not cliche'd) perspective, and is refreshingly honest about money.
What do you mean? Is there any company whose marketing department you would rate higher?
you really could learn better from ballmer than from jobs imo.
i'd much rather be successful for the like ballmer than jobs. cult following is creepy, and recieving kudos even when you do nothing makes it easy to lose perspective.
jobs was great at what he did, but massively overrated thanks to the excellent work of the apple marketting guys. those guys are absolutely amazing at what they do. its a shame they don't get more credit.