That's nonsense. Ballmer kept Microsoft in the 90's style of doing business, but this didn't work so well in the 2000's. After Satya took over he embraced opensource. He allowed Linux into Azure, which is bold. He killed the Windows division, which is very bold. He made Windows free. He made Office free for devices with small screens. He opensourced .NET and other products such as VSCode and TypeScript. He incorporated Linux kernel into Windows. None of these things would have happened under Balmer. These are bold moves and these moves are responsible for why customers, developers and investors love the new Microsoft.
Yeah, no. article from 2012 https://www.wired.com/2012/01/meet-bill-gates/ . Adoption may have accelerated under Nadella, but this was the direction the company was headed.
>He allowed Linux into Azure, which is bold.
Azure was supporting Linux VMs in 2012.
>He killed the Windows division, which is very bold.
You say bold, I say stupid. Windows is still a big chunk of earnings and all that Nadella/Panos have managed to do is piss off long-standing customers by producing a half-assed Windows 10 version every six months.
>He made Office free for devices with small screens
Again, 2012 is when Office mobile was launched.
>He opensourced .NET and other products such as VSCode and TypeScript.
I hate to keep harping on 2012, but yeah, Typescript was announced in 2012 as well.
I'm not going to Fisk every line of your points. There seems to be some sort of blind hatred for Ballmer on HN such that it makes people think there was a magic wand waved by Nadella to suddenly spread enlightenment throughout Microsoft.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft was already changing.
I don't know if you're joking or not. The "successes" prior to Satya were Windows 8 and Vista :)
Windows is much better now than it ever was.
Most importantly, he said and acted as if Windows wasn't the core of the company. A challenging but right decision.
It's still a 40-year-old company, so it still has some historic issues. But yes, I do feel like Satya has done a great job.
Strikes me that these two things are the same failure. WinRT wasn't up to the task due to Windows 8 being poorly thought out, so Office couldn't use it.
Every single thing he's credited for "turning around" was launched under Ballmer.
My reading of Ballmer from the outside (I'd left long before the recent transition years) is that he probably trusted his division heads too much. He figured they knew what they were doing and he just had to steer the giant ship gently in a general direction.
What other explanation is there for letting Sinofsky run amok with the horseshit that was Windows 8 ? Or Office refusing to ship WinRT apps, ever ?
Ballmer had Microsoft in his blood and I loved him for that. People like to make fun of his "Developers, Developers, Developers" video, but that man put his soul in his work. Nadella is bent on competing on low-price Linux VMs with AWS and he will lose that bet in the long run.
I don't feel like I need to go into the abomination that is Windows 10.
Or maybe I'm just a bitter Windows Phone user shaking my fist at the clouds (no pun intended).