I think your statement might be driven by narrative (which is my point about Ballmer's public perception) because if you have a look at the acquisitions, I don't think MS comes out looking bad at all next to G.
Have a look at G's acquisitions [1] , and MS [2]
MSFT looks actually a little more tame by the numbers.
Satya will have to do much more than amp up all the products and services that Gates and Ballmer launched in order to keep the reputation he has right now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Ballmer re-orged MSFT's entire business model, and launched most of the platforms and services from which they derive their revenue today.
What has Satya done, materially, do improve MS revenue? In terns of new products, services or op models, etc?
We all love MS code, but it's not that important. Linux on Azure was a market-driven inevitability.
We'll have to wait and see to really judge, just as it's only really now becoming clear what Ballmer did and did not.
First off - opinions on HN don't matter at all.
Even the opinions of tech tastemakers often don't matter.
The vast majority of people in tech know nothing or care nothing of the personal disposition of Ballmer, Satya or Gates.
As you suggest 'perception matters' on some levels, but it's often not fundamental.
I'm doubtful at all that there was any material dissonance or embrace of MS technologies due to Ballmer v. Satya's approach.
Ballmer was by any reasonable measure, massively successful in growing MS developer mind share.
C# / .Net can only be described as a phenomenal success and this was mostly 'Ballmer era'.
Typescript, MS new daring web contribution was started under Ballmer, and it's also been important in terms of developing mind share.
MS VS Code was technically started under Ballmer, though it's possible he may have never supported it's release.
I think the failure of IE during the Ballmer era is a bad stain, but they were up against a good product as well (Chrome).
As for Satya - what products or initiatives has he launched that has improved MS position among developers? I think we can give him some credit for VS Code, what else?
Open Sourcing Chakra? That hasn't done much. Switching over to Edge/Chrome ... hasn't changed much.
Now let's consider the 'stock market attribution' issue.
" The stock market is by definition the best long term evaluator of a CEO "
So in early 2008, the majority of 'stock market' indicies would put most large bank CEO's in the 'good camp' but as it turns out they were completely wrong? Stock markets are often wrong.
What's at issue here is mostly market perceptions and macro fundamentals, not the assessment of CEOs.
In the early 2000's, P/E ratios in tech were not good, in 2009 obviously they crashed. Since then, we've seen increasing levels of liquidity from the Fed 'crazy market' valuations across the board. This has little to do with MS specifically.
Also in the 2000's MS had competitors in G and FB, investors were concerned about long term viability, keeping MSFT multiple specifically down a little. They thought Windows and Office were going to die. But this lack of foresight by analysts was wrong in retrospect wasn't it?
Windows is not dying.
Office is not dying esp. now that they are subscription + web.
The cloud is a big new business for MS, so are many of their other products.
In summary, almost everything Microsoft is today, is due to Gates and Ballmer. Were p/e ratios have been reasonable in perfect hindsight, the stock price would have reflected that and then some.
Satya has benefitted tremendously from the massive money making engine that Gates and Ballmer made, and it remains to be seen exactly what he will do that will make MS a fundamentally greater company.
I believe that Satya was the right choice for the right time, but that ultimately he will not be transformative on the level of either Gates or Ballmer. I don't think Satya is going to take MS into vast new lines of business, re-shaping what they are etc.. Instead - Satya will be guiding growth through a maturing of MS.
A footnote: Amazon is approaching a 1,000,000 employees.
Have a look: [1] [2] - what changed really was simply the price/earnings multiplier, not really the underlying fundamentals. Though this is very important, I don't think it's the most important part of the Ballmer culture era.
Revenues and product line expansion grew phenomenally, Ballmer brought huge new business lines and the cloud into the fore.
The culture may have been perceived as toxic by some, but it's debatable if that's just hearsay or if it had a real effect on productivity etc..
That Ballmer failed on a few points (slow to embrace Linux) is fine - no big companies win everywhere and neither will Satya. MS failed at search? Well Google failed as social as well. Neither of them are hard done by it, there are other unassailable market leaders who do it better somewhere else anyhow,
Satya is obviously a welcome shift, and culture change was probably timely along with embrace of open source etc. (right man for the right time) - but Ballmer was good for MSFT. He was the right man for the right time as well, and probably good that he left when he did.
My experience is that it's really, really hard to judge culture from the outside - and literally different buildings/groups have completely different culture.
Amazon will be a case study in that stage of growth however - it may have a lot to do with how much Bezos cares to deal with it, or play with rockets all day like Larry and Sergei. I wonder how very few companies have done that really well - i.e. gone from 15K -> 100K and maintained dynamism. Probably few if any.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/sto...